The Anna Karenina Principle and MBTI type confusion

[sarasa_cat]

It is hard to explain my mixed feelings about MBTI ... I find it useful until I do not and there are so many ways in which it is not useful plus there is so much MBTI garbage littering the planet.

That said, something struck me earlier today -- The Anna Karenina Principle and how it applied (to some extent) to MBTI, and that became the seed for a 4500 word essay on Tumblr.

https://sarasa-cat.tumblr.com/post/183238307477/the-anna-karenina-principle-and-mbti-type

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Comments

...this is such a can of worms. Can. Of. Worms.

[sarasa_cat]

Regarding this theory/model as a means for understanding certain aspects of people -- specifically, how we take information in and how we act upon it -- the stuff glossed over in that post is only the entrance to the rabbit hole.

There is something else I plan on writing and posting soon -- something in response to various things I have been reading plus a series of podcasts -- that attempts to explain why someone saying "Oh, I have really strong T" or "My S is seriously strong" is completely meaningless (something the author of the mbti-notes blog politely/socratically chides people of but never truly hand-holds people through an explanation of *why* they (politely) say "okay, that's nice" in response ... I guess it took me a long time to work through the socratic process on my own to figure out the answer, all while watching mbti-notes interact with people over the years. Haha! ;)

To use the INTJ stack for sake of example (Ni Te Fi Se), if someone who, unbeknownst to themself, says "Dude, my F is really strong", what they really mean is so much F going on in my way of thinking, their hyper-focus on Fi's need for authentic expression of their values and (via the Te-Fi polarity) having those values recognized at some level by society can end up front and center in the brain ***regardless*** of whether or not they are looping. Heck, they could be chugging along doing their thing but feeling bent out of shape because their values and their authenticity isn't being rewarded in their environment ... and if they are unconscious or not entirely aware of how that part of their mind works, Fi will run around screaming like a typical 3rd function: sort of like an immature pre-teen. ;) Obviously, this example also holds true for ISTJ (Si Te Fi Ne).

So, then, this person is given an MBTI style questionnaire to fill out and if this crankypoo feeling regarding their values is talking WAY TOO LOUDLY in that lack of indoor voice that many pre-teens have, lol, this person looks at the MBTI questionnaire and is all F F F F F F F FFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!! Okay, maybe a few Ts over here T T T FFFFFFFFFF. BECAUSE OMFGBBBBBQ THAT F IS SO STRONG. SO OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE AN F TYPE in the mbti four-letter code.

And cue the blogger behind mbti-notes saying "okay, that's nice" when they unload their problem du jour via an anon ask and preface it with "my F is so strong." ;)

Using this Fi example, same thing can happen to an ExTJ who, via this model, will have Fi in the 4th position of the stack. Fi is their least aware, least conscious, least with-the-program function that is still within their 4-function wheelhouse. (the other four so-called "shadow functions" are outside their wheel house and much speculation exists in the community on how that model works. anyhow...). If an ExTJ's 4th function -- Fi -- has the maturity and development level of, say, a toddler, well, just try using reason with a toddler (haha). Sometimes it "works" and sometimes you are just along for the toddler's ride. Talk about some epic strong Fi. (and cue: "okay, that's nice.")

There are many reasons why I have never taken the various MBTI instruments or popular surveys very seriously -- much of it has to do with my training in instrument design. But it wasn't until I started understanding that polarity aspects of the model, or how all of this builds on Jung's theories of the conscious and unconscious (and, obviously, Jung's theories of Si, Se, Ni, Ne, Ti, Te, Fi, and Fe) -- it wasn't until then that I started realizing how absolutely terrible any "Insta-method" is at measuring one's type. Maybe it gives a starting point or maybe it just confuses the heck out of a person.

...

In the end, I suspect but do not yet know how to "confirm" that a number of the type profile sets are actually based on a completely different and, frankly, completely useless/irrelevant notion of MBTI type.

Whenever I read media essays by people who really hate MBTI, who talk about how they have been typed as a handful of different types by these surveys, and how it is evil/wrong for corporations and schools to use MBTI (I agree with them on that point), I know they are criticizing the exact same thing that I am criticizing.

From what I know, the officially MBTI(tm) corp used to use an intense 5-step process to determine type and it was very costly: a survey was a starting point, followed by an interview with a specialist, followed by other magic that is proprietary.

This, obviously, is not cost effective when an organization wants to type 100s or 1000s of people ... thus the newer simplified method and, well, garbage in, garbage out.

I suspect that many of the people who have set up shop giving out extensive free info (mbti-notes.tumblr.com, an INFJ) or making a mission/business out of combining extensive free info with proprietary($) training and development products (personality hacker.com, run by an ENTP and an ENFP) are motivated to fight back against what the MBTI(tm) machine has unfortunately become. But .... that is a big tangent.

tl;dr: most of those type descriptions are useless stereotypes. Also, I feel horrible for employees and students who are subjected to MBTI-based bullshit that attempts to turn them into useful cogs in the big machine. There are some terrible horror stories about this in a hiddenbrain podcast, if I remember correctly. And thus the real controversy at the heart of MBTI.

Re: ...this is such a can of worms. Can. Of. Worms.

[thehungrycity]

I like your description of the tertiary and 4th functions as teenager and toddler respectively ;) It makes a lot of sense though, especially when considered in the context of their environment. I have started listening to some of the personality hacker podcast (specifically on the loops right now, because that is really speaking to me), and there is just so much to this theory. So many levels.

We used MBTI and the HBDI (http://www.hbdi.com/HBDI-book/c/) models when I was in the public service... mostly they were used as a way of learning more about yourself and the people you work with so that you can get along better, but I understand that sometimes they can be used to screen people in or out of certain professions, which is just all kinds of wrong.

Re: ...this is such a can of worms. Can. Of. Worms.

[sarasa_cat]

All kinds of wrong: Yeah. I need to find that podcast that interviewed people who were subjected to the Wrong(tm).

The personality hacker team makes a repeated point of saying "we are into these models *because* they support personal development" and "we like all sorts of models that can be used for personal development, but use them (pragmatically) ONLY to the extent they are useful" ... and I suspect their reasoning is very much in resistance to the Wrong(tm).

Mbti-notes.tumblr.com makes a point of stating exactly where they stand against the Wrong(tm).

The toddler and pre-teen observation is from the personality hacker crew. My one beef with their content is how their verbiage plays fast and loose with Jung's concepts but, as an inroad, it is a good place to start once one unpacks their own biases based on who they are.

MBTI-notes is very dense and difficult to grok because they often assume the reader has knowledge in psychology, Jung, and philosophy. It takes multiple reads to realize that they are often using terms in very technical, very precise ways but once that realization hits (and you understand the language), they are a wealth of information compiled from many sources respected in the mbti world, plus their own spin from via their experiences.